


Violence/Silence

by KrasneTigritsa



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Canon What Canon, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I watched some really well-edited fanvids okay, No editing we die like mne, Some swears because it sounded wrong without ‘em, Steve is collected and Bucky’s falling apart but they’re both hurting, Suicidal Ideation, and healing starts but still has a long way to go, location: a generic hotel room, sort of...light on the comfort?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-12 21:23:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16879437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KrasneTigritsa/pseuds/KrasneTigritsa
Summary: On the run and hiding out in a hotel room, Bucky Barnes starts to fall apart. Judging from the scattered pieces, he shouldn’t be worth the effort Steve’s putting into keeping him alive; but Steve’s always been one for futile endeavors.





	Violence/Silence

**Author's Note:**

> So, this...happened. 
> 
> Takes place in a fuzzy, contextless timeline. Mid-Civil War, but, like, an alternate universe Civil War? I guess? 
> 
> This is more of a character study than anything else. I wanted to put more comfort in, but I didn’t want it to ring false, either.

Steven Grant Rogers does not move like a soldier.

The Asset knows soldiers. The men and women he lived and worked with during his brief times of consciousness are nebulous creatures, moving about him in faceless hordes, but at some point in the hated past, he had learned how they moved—loose-limbed one moment, stiff and brittle the next. The difference between familiar, comfortable company and the appearance of a superior.

Soldiers were human at heart, soft animals who could put on armor if needed. Almost two creatures in one.

So no, Steve Rogers does not move like a soldier.

His peripheral vision is blurry, but he does not turn his head to watch the way the man rips open a coffee packet, putting it into the tiny motel coffeemaker. He watches without moving, to all appearances staring at the carpet in front of his feet, but he sees enough.

Steve Rogers wastes no energy. Efficient as a machine. Graceful as a dancer. The same life in every action, whether it’s in the middle of a fight or...here. Whatever this is.

The Asset stops watching Steve watch the coffeemaker, keeping the awareness of the room’s extra body in his head as his eyes move on through the rest of the room. Two beds. Both smell stale, like dust and old sweat. Actual dust is white on the tops of both headboards, making a fuzzy coating over a pair of bronze lamps with white pleated shades. Everything is either teal or brown, except for the walls. They are tan.

The brewing coffee smells like cat piss.

“I’m not sure how much you remember,” Steve Rogers says, picking up the now-full coffee cup and leaning against the wall, still in the Asset’s peripheral vision.“But I’m gonna guess it isn’t much.”

The Asset risks a glance at him, half-involuntary, before returning to the safety of appearing to stare at the carpet. He’s not sure what he thinks of Steve’s face. The man looks—calm. Collected. Like he doesn’t expect anything of the Asset just now. It’s a reassuring look.

But Steve Rogers has a face that won’t stop trying to turn the Asset’s innards counterclockwise, like he’s got a rusty bolt somewhere inside that needs to come loose, and that isn’t reassuring at all.

“I knew you.”

“Since we were kids,” Steve Rogers confirms.

“You used to be smaller.”

This sparks a laugh. Exactly one laugh, a single humorous huff of breath.

“Figures you’d remember that.”

That is not the extent of the Asset’s memories, but it is the farthest extent he can put into words. The rest is a jumbled mess of smells and feelings, flashes of light, expressions and moments. He’s not sure how much of the choppiness is due to his own brain, reflecting the past as efficiently as a shattered mirror could, and how much is just—how it had been. Hydra hadn’t let him have more consecutive hours awake than they had to. He remembers the missions the clearest, but even they make little sense—all action and no context. Orders and obedience. The moment of completion—the kill. Always successful. Unlike the living, his mind never lets him leave the dead vague and faceless; every one of them, he can see as clearly as the moment he’d shot, or stabbed, or beat them to death.

The rusted bolt in his chest groans, but refuses to budge.

“What’s the gun for, Buck?”

He looks down at the bedspread. The .38 looks back at him, not quite out of reach.

“Protection,” he says automatically.

“From me?” The question is matter-of-fact, cognitive. The Asset—Bucky—frowns, still looking at the gun.

“I think—from me.”

*   *   *

Steve doesn’t need the gun. Bucky doesn’t want it. It ends up in the drawer of the nightstand, next to a bible and a phone book.

Bucky—the Asset—gets a full night of sleep. So does Steve.

Just because the nightmares won’t wake you, doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

*   *   *

“I can’t bring you in,” Steve tells him, cross-legged on the hotel bed. He’d handed the Asset a cup of hot black cat piss, and is currently nursing his own. “They want you for war crimes, Buck, but too many people want it to end before there’s the chance for a trial.”

Somehow, the notion of strangers wanting him dead seems almost commonplace. It’s the notion that this one man actually wants him alive that keeps catching the Asset by surprise. It—it’s wrong, somehow. It has to be.

“I didn’t bomb the embassy.”

“I know you didn’t, Bu—“

“But I’ve killed—a lot of people,” he goes on. “Trial or no trial, it’ll probably end the same way.”

Steve goes quiet. He looks at Bucky.

“You think you deserve that?” He asks.

Bucky shrugs. He remembers a woman’s hand scrabbling at his chest as he crushed her throat with one hand. He remembers the metallic taste of blood in his mouth, the chest-deep terror as they pushed him back into the chair for another wipe.

“Dealt it out to enough people who didn’t.”

“You didn’t choose that.” Steve says immediately. “You can’t be held accountable. That’s not justice.”

“I know I didn’t choose it, damn it!” Bucky finds himself shouting. He crumples the paper coffee cup in his hand and throws it to floor, ignoring the burn of hot liquid on his skin. “I did it!”

For the first time since they’d checked into the motel, Steve’s face registers surprise. For some reason, this feels like a victory. “I did it all!” Bucky shouts, standing up with his burnt hand in a fist. “I can see their faces! I remember killing every single one of them! So yeah,If someone wants to take revenge, they’ve got my fucking blessing, as soon as you stop standing in the way!”

His fury burns off sometime in the ensuing silence. Steve Rogers does not waste energy. He sits, a thousand emotions all equally unreadable crossing his face, until Bucky no longer wants to start a shouting match.

“I’m not gonna stop standing in the way, Buck,” he says.

Bucky—the Asset—whoever it is his dry bones belong to, is exhausted. He’s been doing this so long, chased along from mission to mission, on the run with death snapping his heels, even in his sleep. He doesn’t want to die, really. But—

“I just want to rest.”

The admission gives the final wrench to the bolt in his chest, and his breath catches as his eyes start to sting.

“I just want to—I can’t even sleep without seeing—“

“Buck,” Steve says, moving towards him.

Steve Rogers does not move like a soldier. He does not move like a civilian, either. He moves like a man certain, with a single purpose, to wrap his arms around Bucky. He moves like a marble statue might, if it came to sudden life, but he is as warm as he is solid.

Bucky is scattered and trembling, and he clings, sobbing. He is so very tired.

“I’m sorry.” Steve says, holding him together. “I’m so sorry, Bucky.”

He’s saved Bucky’s life more than once. He has nothing to apologize for.

But still, Bucky isn’t sure if he can forgive him.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
